Merry Christmas!!

We enjoyed our Christmas day as a family! It did start earlier this year than last year. The boys were up shortly before 7:00, abut we were able to hold them off about a half an hour, then they woke big sis up and ran down. Before they actually got her up, Spencer had been down scouting out the scene.

Here is what the kids would find when they went down. Santa came!!
A close up of all the loot!!
Here they are checking out some things Santa brought them!

New Pillow Pets....Yayyyyy!!! Jordan-bumblebee, Spencer a Pteradactyl, and Landon a T-Rex!

And he also came through on the directions he left the kids. Inside Jordan's shirt was a necklace with CTR on it. Spencer recieved a nice set of markers, and Landon a cute stuffed dog.

Here are a bunch of pictures of the fun we had.
Jordan was super excited to get 2 sets of Littlest Pet shop Triplets-kitties and bunnies.
Landon and Spencer open a present from sissy-a set of Dinosaur Train toys-a train and some dinosaurs. The loved it so much!


Landon opening a present from nana and papa-an awesome race track.

Daddy and his kindle


When we had opened everything, I realized I had left a bag downstairs. Oops....But it was a good thing nothing was from Santa so I was a bit relieved. I had made Jordan a photo book of her fun times of 2010; which she loves.

Spencer playing with his How to Train Your Dragon toys.
Landon playing with his awesome new race track. It is shake and go, so we had tons of fun with it.

Darin surprised me with an Ipod touch. I was sooo excited. I really wanted one, but really did not expect one. (we not have children addicted to it, but that's a whole other post.) We do have one pic of me with it, but it's on my other camera but I don't have the cord near me at the moment.

The children were pretty excited about all their new things. We spent the day playing with new toys, watching new movies-they got Dispicable me, Beauty and the Beast, How to Train your Dragon, and Toy Story 3.

We had planned on dinner a friend's house, but they had sick family members so Darin ran the store and got a small ham and we had the rest of stuff for a small ham dinner. It turned out really nice. We missed seeing our friends, but have since gone over for a New Years dinner, which was great.

Once again, we had a really enjoyable day together and I'm thankful for a day to be able to celebrate and rejoice in the birth of our Savior.

a little tweak in our usual Christmas Eve Tradition

We have done new Christmas pajamas on Christmas Eve the last few years....

But this year, I had to tweak our tradition just a bit. The kiddos still got to open something on Christmas Eve, but it was not Christmas Pajamas....for a few reasons. I was a bit too late in my shopping. By the time I tried to find some cute ones, it was pretty slim pickins! I was really bummed. I found a potential set at Carters, but couldn't really justify spending that much money. In addition, the kids have all ended up with tons of pajamas. Landon gets all Spencer's old ones, and Jordan inherited some from friends as well. I couldn't really justify adding another un-needed pair.

Next year I plan to not buy as many pairs at the consignment sale so it will be more practical to buy a new pair for Christmas.

So instead, all the kiddos got new

Snuggies!!!

Jordan and Spencer surprised to see a snuggie instead of pajamas.


Jordan got a nice pretty girly one.
Spencer and Landon got "Mario" ones. These were nice $3.00 Black Friday deals at Wal-Mart that I got after Black Friday77!!!


So they all took them to bed with them on Christmas eve to snuggle and fall asleep so the big guy could come.

National Harbor fun

A couple days before Christmas we took our kids and the Price girls to the National Harbor. It was a fun place, and they really do it up well for Christmas. We went to the Gaylord Hotel. It is so beautiful and lots is going on for the holidays.

Last year they had a train set up, but this year it got a bit larger. They had a train you could ride on. Of course the minute the kids saw I know what we would be doing. So I smooshed myself inside the caboose since that is where Landon wanted. Really, he was probably tall enough to go alone. It was a bit anti-climactic since it just went in a circle about 7 or 8 times. But the kids still loved it. My knees didn't.

We loved watching the fountain show and ended up staying long enough to see it twice-from 2 different vantage points.


The colors were really pretty.

Jordan and Sarah


The whole group. Trying to get 5 kids to smile in the pic....yeah. Getting ready to watch the light show.

The fountain got pretty high in the air. We did feel a bit of a mist being so close to the water.

Spencer loves water in any form. He was thrilled to be so close. He was dancing around and having a blast....all the while getting soaked.

A very wet Spencer. We had to take his sweatshirt off before we left so he wouldn't be freezing cold inside his coat. It was a pretty cold night.
Kaalie and Sarah also had a lot of fun getting wet during the show.

A visit to Santa

Since Santa did not come to our Ward Christmas Party this year, we needed to go see him! We heard that Santa went to Merrifield Garden Center, so we went to see him there.

However, were not given ample instructions about visiting the North Pole. Seriously, this Santa is big time!! When we walked in, we saw a relatively short line, not realizing that it snaked around and was much longer. We stood there for a while, then realized what we were in for. We heard the ladies behind us talking about this Santa. Apparently he has been coming to this Portable North Pole for over 30 years. One of the moms who was bringing her children went there as a child.

So thus began the wait. And wait, and wait, and wait, and wait. Oh, let's see, let's just wait some more. Do you get it, we waited a long time!!!

The good thing is that the place was really cool. There were little booths that the kids sat in. There was a huge advent calendar on the wall that was amazing. It was the letters of the alphabet and it was religious in nature!! Apparently Santa is quite religious, which I'll get to later.


Here are the children sitting in one of the little booths. There was a family in front of us with a cute little girl who followed the kids around. At one point they gave up and left, which was good news to us since it made our wait a bit less. As I mentioned, Santa is quite religious. He makes a really cool advent calendar, and I heard it changes each year. This year it was an alphabet theme with something spiritual mentioned for each day. You may not be able to see it clearly, but it was really cool. I was excited when they gave us a copy of it when we went home.



Here are a few of the ones I really liked.
This was on the wall when you first entered in. I really liked it..



On the ceiling were little clouds with "Merry Christmas" spelled out in lots of different languages. It was really neat. There were lots of displays and a big nativity.

The boys loved the nativity, but they kept moving it around. Landon would cover the baby Jesus up with straw. Guess he felt he wasn't warm enough.

When we were about to be in the room with Santa, he needed a break and came out into the waiting area to sing some Christmas Carols.

Have you ever seen Santa kneel down at a nativity and worship Baby Jesus?

Santa adores baby Jesus
Here's the sleigh Santa sits in.

After Santa's singing break, he had to give us a lesson in how to become an elf. Cute, but we get the show on the road!!

So here's the scoop on Santa. Every child must fill out a paper with their list. They have to present it to Santa when they walk up. (and don't make the mistake of letting they youngest go first because she will cry and Santa will chastise you for not letting the oldest go first because "that is the way it goes.") Oops.

So each child stands facing Santa. He says their name, age and grade. He makes a little small talk then has them sit on his lap. They go through the list and he glances at mom or dad for each item. According to a signal he gets, he would say "yes, I can bring you that" or "ah, no, I have something better for you." He then does more small talk, we take pictures and he give each child a set of specific instructions and puts a ribbon around their head and says "place this ribbon high on the tree for my eyes to see."

Here are each of the kids instructions:

Jordan: put a plate of chocolate chip cookies inside the shirt she is wearing under the tree for Mr. Clause and in the morning there will be something beautiful for her to wear.

Spencer: put a potatoe inside the shirt he is wearing for the reindeer. In the morning, there will be something special inside the shirt.

Landon: put 3 cookies on a plate, with 2 carrots and a small glass of milk. In the morning there will be something special for him.

If I had sat in his sleigh, I would have had instructions, as well. It was funny to listen to him talk to the teenagers and moms who went before us.

Here are each of the kids with Santa



And a nice shot, of course:)



And the 3 kiddos with their ribbons.
Thanks Santa for the great visit. I do believe!!

a cute sheep, a sweet angel, and a little stinker.

We had our ward nativity a couple weekends ago. It was really great. I wasn't so sure how it would turn out given the chaos at the practice, but everyone did really well during the performance, and the people watching loved it. And thanks for taking pics, Darin, I was back stage during the whole performance.

Spencer was not thrilled at all to be a sheep again. "I don't like being a sheep. It's boring. They don't do anything." He will be much happier to be a barnyard animal next year.

Here he shows his feelings for being a sheep.

Spencer and his friend James. Not so sure what's going on here.


Jordan, on the other hand, was thrilled to be an angel.
Here's our angel singing her heart out. She now LOVES the song "Angels We Have Heard on High" and belts it out whenever it she sings it.




And last but not least, Landon. Here's how he spent some of the program-hiding under the stage right by the music leader. That is when he was not in the middle of the floor pushing a chair around. Yeah, Darin wanted to crawl under his chair. In tithing settlement, Bishop Stowers told us he enjoyed watching Landon's antics. Nice. Next year he will be a sheep...we'll see how that goes.

a lucky duck!

I found this note on the table the other day.

I have such a sweet little girl and I love her sooo much. She never ceases to amaze me. What a great heart!!!

Finally......SUCCESS!!

So I have a history of total and complete failures when it comes to making gingerbread houses. And I'm talking the easy kit ones. I wouldn't even dare to make my own gingerbread to make a house.

The first year I tried it would not stay together so I gave up and threw it away. I skipped a year and tried again, with the same results. We did one last year that stayed together for a little bit, but then fell apart. I tried a Halloween house once again with quite lackluster results.

So I was bound and determined to make it work this year. The kids got out of school 2 hours early the other day, so figured we had the time.

Drum roll please......

I DID IT!! I actually did it!!!

I cannot express my excitement with my accomplishment!! I couldn't believe it actually worked. The kids helped me hold up the sides and it stayed together-and it's strong too:) Woo Hoo!!!!


Yeah-it stayed together!! Let's get ready to decorate now:)

Here we are all working together. I would put the frosting, then the kids would put the candy. And man that stuff is like cement. After the first bit in the bag ran out, it was really tricky to put more in the bag. I would be piping it on, and it was leaking out the top. The boys loved eating it, but it is gross to me-like eating pure sugar. They ate lots of the candy, too, but we had lots of fun!

Yeah!! Our finished product!!!


Another view...just because I'm so dang excited it worked!!



Some of the details. If you know my children well, you know who did this....ok, I'll tell you. Spencer obsessed with orange, so this this is his handy work. So colorful and bright-just makes me happy. We never did them as kids, so it's so fun for me:)




Here's Spencer's final contribution: When I wasn't looking he thought he would label the house. It is pretty cute because he is starting to write more around the house like Jordan did at that age.



I am already excited to do one next year. I CAN do it!! We may have to do a Halloween house, too. Woo Hoo!!!!